The Good Wife

I was chatting with a friend the other night, and she asked if mr myn was fully supportive of my writing. Turns out she wasn't feeling like she was getting the support she needed at home.And I thought about it for a while and then I asked him. At which point he shrugged and said "sure."

On the surface such a response may not mean much, but I have to qualify it.

1) Writing is intensely personal. And it can be hard to do. Some days the words just flow, but other days it can literally be like pulling teeth when a scene just isn't working, or characters aren't cooperating. He's always given me the time to write when I needed it - and rarely says anything against it.

2) He's never said anything disparaging about me "wasting my time." I have to say, I have talked to a number of unfortunate writers whose spouses seem to think giving them a time constraint is the thing to do - i.e. "you have two years to get pubbed and then you'll need to stop." Now, I would imagine that part of this argument has to do with incomes. At least, I hope they would. And maybe there's a truth to that - if money is tight, and you can't reasonably take 4 years off to write that novel, than maybe it *is* fair to give an ultimatum like that. Although personally, I think the pressure of that would be a pretty wretched thing to have to write under. Not even counting the fact that it would be hard to get the words out, anyone who's tried to get pubbed knows that it really can take years, for a number of reasons. I don't know. Putting a statute of limitations on happiness seems like a shitty thing to do.

3) The money, or lack thereof. Which currently isn't that much of an issue for me at the moment. We both work full time, because we have to - we're in debt and there's not much else to say about it. So the idea of me ever quitting my job to write full time is laughable. I earn just under six figures right now as it is. In order for us to be able to pay our mortgage, I'd have to be pulling in Stephanie Meyer type money from my writing, and I'm not under any illusions as to the chances of *that* happening. The most I can hope for is maybe making enough that I could try going part time, but that's probably about it. I know mr myn has a few delusions of grandeur as to what my rate of success is going to be, but I've always been up front with him about it. Starting writers *maybe* get a $5000 advance - after taxes and agent cuts (assuming I have one)  I'd be getting the equivalent of about one extra paycheck for the month. So clearly, I'm not doing this for the money - but again, I know other writers whose spouses think they should quit writing, simply because they aren't making enough at it. Fine line, that, and I have no answer for it.

4) I am a Good Wife. This means I put up with a lot of stuff. He works - a lot. Most weekends, a lot of evenings, most days off - most holidays. But this is part of what being married to a cop means, and I knew that going in.  I decided long ago that I didn't want to be one of those wives who never allowed their husbands to do anything. So, I say very little when he goes off-roading on his days off..or when he joined his band...or started up whatever his latest hobby of the month is. Which sounds kind of snarky, but it's not - he tends to flit from one thing to another - and I so rarely say no to any of it. (I *did* put my foot down on the time he wanted to take his friend's glider up - the one that's powered by basically a lawn mower engine, but that's just me).

Now, if you're lucky enough to be one of my IM buds, you know I *do* bitch about some of this stuff, quite a bit. And some of you probably think I should lay down the law.  And maybe I should - there is a time when people need to grow up and put away their toys and all that (especially given we have kids and all the rest of it).

However, Good Wife duties aside, I don't really cook. Or clean. (I mean, I try, but honestly, who the hell has time, and given that as soon as I make a clean spot on the carpet it's pretty much just an open invitation for one of the kids to dump chocolate milk all over it I tend to be kind of apathetic about it...)

But then I think about the writing, and realize the door swings both ways. I mean, I complain about my house being a mess, but does that stop me from playing WoW for 5 hours straight instead of cleaning? Not really.

Does he say anything about it? Complain about my lack of cooking skills? Bitch about my bathrooms not being spotless?

Nope.

And that says more to me than you might think.

The Remains of the Day

Several lifetimes ago I read the book The Remains of the Day. It had been suggested to me by a man I'd met and had a brief...something with. I wouldn't have called it a fling, exactly. It certainly wasn't an affair. More a case of mistaken time and place, perhaps. One of those things where if circumstances had been different, perhaps the end result would also have been different.

Or perhaps it wouldn't have.

It's hard to say. But I do remember in one of his letters that he had mentioned the book, expressing the fear that perhaps we would meet again in the distant future, only to realize in that one moment that we had made a terrible mistake - that we might have wasted a chance at happiness for the sake of practicality.

But that's the rub, isn't it? Because you can never know what the end result of your choices may be. It's entirely possible that I might run into him again 20 years from now, but who can say?

I was unable to sleep last night for a various number of reasons (yes, the back pain is back - I'm about 90% sure the disc has herniated again, but I'm working with the doctors on additional options, at the moment). So for some reason I was thinking a lot on choices and regret - heavy topics for the wee hours, I suppose.

And the truth of it is that I'm still sad about having to make a more recent choice. A greater person would probably be able to get over and get on with their lives...but I'm the bulldog of obsession. It takes me a very long time to let go - and I have a tendency to worry at the issue until it pretty much just falls apart. I've been told I'm a slow boil, so maybe that's why. There are times where I wish I could just get pissed off and then get on with my life...but I don't. I'm a fixer - I'm constantly trying to see where I went wrong, if there was anything I could have done differently. By the time I figure out I should have just gotten really angry about it, it's almost too late. So I stew and worry and stew and worry.  And then one day I realize that I haven't thought about said issue in quite a while, and I know I'm over it.

Harder for me this time around, having to realize that someone I trusted so deeply turned out be someone much different than I thought. It makes me question my judgement, and that's the hardest thing of all, especially given the circumstances. And I am full of regret for so many reasons.

But who's to say things would have turned out differently, even if I hadn't cut the cord as I did?

Apropos of nothing, I reached out to my non-paramour friend recently (being that the internet is a fickle sort of beast). Call it curiosity if you want, or maybe just a need to touch base with my past, a reassurance that I can, in fact, make a good decision. Turns out we're both married with two children, careers and all the rest of it - and there are no regrets on either side.

And that makes me dreadfully happy.

So now, I suppose it's up to me to find out what to do with the remains of *my* day, however long it lasts.

Ehhhh....

Not burning out. Not yet.  LOL. But that Dragon Age game is kicking my ass. Been up *way* too late trying to play it the last few nights. I'm still ahead of where I need to be in the daily NaNo count, but it's starting to slip. Gonna have to make up some ground this weekend (like I did last weekend).

Writing wise, it's going okay, though I've hit a point or two where if I were just writing normally, I'd stop and take stock of what I've put down and where I'm planning on going. Can't do that here since I just don't have the time.

But still. I can see now that my regular pace of 1000 words a day (on work days) really is about the limit for me, at least as far as decent writing goes. Although that doesn't count any pbp posts or the side projects I'm also working on, both of which can be fun and rather distracting.

Ah well. No news on additional contest wins or hearing back from requested fulls and the like. But I'm not going to press too deep for any - no news is good news, isn't it? That's what I'm going to tell myself, anyway. :)

NaNo? Meet Perky Jerky.

I'm not sure where to go with this, but hey - if you like meat and you want wake up by eating it, try Perky Jerky. (And wow, does that sound wrong, so on so many levels.) 150 mgs. of caffeine in every...um...stick. Yeah. Okay. I'm just going to go away now.

And no, I haven't tried it.

Stealth Finalist

You know, for all my fine words about turning off Twitter to NaNo (which I did) - I popped on a little while ago to find a congratulations from @lynettecurtis. For finaling in the Lori Brighton blog contest. And I was like...I did?

*facepalm*

Yes. Actually it turns out that my opening paragraph finaled. You can see mine and the other finalists here --> http://loribrighton.blogspot.com/2009/11/finalists.html.  There are 24 of us, out of something like 100 or more, I think. Megan Records of Kensington judged them, and the end result is now I get to send in my first page. If I make it past that, then it's the first 15 pages. If I win, she sees the first 3 chapters.

The irony of it is that I entered it on a lark. Someone twittered the thing with a link, I checked it out and was like...Hmmm...free? Sure! And really, what do I have to lose? So, there you go. Drive by contest entry for the win.  ;-)  Or final.  LOL.

Zen And The Art of NaNo

I'm sort of kidding about this. Because honestly, there isn't much art to it. At least not for me. And I have to stop myself from going back and editing and fixing. It's sort of painful, really - because I know what I'm producing isn't the best I can do. But that's the point, isn't it?

The whole idea of NaNo is to just write, without giving that inner editor a chance to pontificate over whether or not the sentence structure really makes sense, or if people really *can* muse out loud.

But it's hard - maybe doubly so for me because I didn't actually plot anything out, other than what I sort of had down for the books I was already working on. (Which wasn't much, panster that I am). So what this means is that I'm writing and having to make it up as I go. Well, truthfully, not so much for ShadowWeaver. I've got an inkling of where Abby's going and she's fairly easy to just set free. I don't really do much more than watch over her shoulder and write down what she does. Not to say I won't need to edit, because the current conversation between her and Charlie right now is painful. (on a number of levels) And I can do better than that.

MoonSong is changing as I write it, from paragraph to paragraph. I've given up trying to back up and fix it. At this point,  I'm just sticking notes in the margin to remind me to rewrite the entire last two pages because now it's become apparent that the hero *didn't* actually get punched in the face - he's had his fingers crushed. And then I just keep going, writing as though his fingers *did* get crushed, with all the immediate fallout thereafter.

It's confusing...and sort of exhilarating, all at the same time. And I've discovered that the hero *really* wants to be the protagonist here. I cranked out 1500 words as though it was nothing...but the moment I tried to switch to a different PoV? It was like I had to drag every word out of them.  And then I ended up in his PoV anyway. Moral of the story? Stop fighting it.  LOL. He wins. It's *his* story now...at least until NaNo is over - at which point I'll take stock of what I have and rework it a bit into more of a solid foundation (for both pieces). By then I ought to have between 30k - 40k on each, so it should be good enough for a start.

Words of wisdom? As per fairyhedgehog, turn off the internet (unless you're doing a writing challenge). And Twitter. And Facebook. And email.

And don't load up Dragon Age: Origins either.

Even though you've been waiting almost 2 years for it to come out.

And it just came out yesterday.

And it utterly, utterly rocks.

*cough*

At least, not until the words are down and backed up. :)

Seriously.

I'd like to say my back is perfect and lovely, but I'm having a moment of panic this morning as a fair amount of pain has returned down the left side. Mostly in the left ass cheek, actually. And it's definitely nerve pain - like what I had before, only in a different place.

It pisses me off.

I do have a tendency to panic, which I'll admit. Though, I *do* feel somewhat justified in doing so, as I seem to have a slew of medical bullshit issues that have no cure and are terribly chronic. (And usually pretty damn painful)

I will say that I no longer have muscle knots in the lumbar area where I did before, so small favors, there. And up until yesterday, things have been utterly brilliant in the pain management area.

For the moment, I'm going to do nothing. I'm going to pretend it's the weather. Or that I picked up Lucy when I shouldn't have. Or that I wore the wrong shoes yesterday. (*cough*) And I'm going to pray to whatever/whoever is listening that this is going to go away and it's just a fluke of the healing process.

It had better be.

On Comics

Sort of a continuation from the Shoujo post from a few days ago. The thing of it is, I don't actually read real comics all that much. I do have a few graphic novels, including The Crow, Sandman and a few odd Elfquests kicking around (but honestly the more recent ones really kind of blow from an artistic standpoint and totally turned me off so I stopped buying them).

But I have to say I'm rather happy with the Buffy ones. As a general continuation of the Buffy story, I find it awesome that Whedon is doing them - and his writing really shows through. They managed to capture a lot of the same sort of snark from the show and best of all? It's *canon*.   That means it counts.

Instead of having the characters waste away in the land of crap fanfiction, the creator moved forward. No actors, no set - just paper, artists and writers. He's basically free to do whatever he wants in his universe, and suspending disbelief is easy for anyone familiar with the Buffy universe.  He's done the same thing with the Angel series as well, and although I do buy and read them, I don't find them quite as fun as Buffy. But then, Angel was a lot darker to begin with. (And I had a harder time buying the storyline towards the end. Got a little funky, even for me).

Greg Wiseman has done the same thing with Gargoyles. I used to spend a lot of time over at Station 8 (many, many moons ago), reading the "Ask Greg" forums, and it's really nice to see so many of the things he talked about there starting to come to life in the comics.  Really looking forward to TimeDancer, if it ever gets off the ground.

...about Comments...

Not a real blog post. More of an announcement on the new commenting thingy I installed. For those of you who *are* leaving comments and filling out your names on the comment form - if you click the little arrow next to the word From, you'll be able to log in as *you* from a bunch of systems - i.e. google, yahoo, OpenID, whatever.  And then your icon will show up as well as subscription options and all that.

:)

*thuds* 1st Day of NaNo Over.

And no, I'm not going to be doing daily updates on this. Just wanted to mention that I cracked past 3000 words today. Which, while admirable, doesn't come close to standing up to some of the NaNo Writing Buddies that managed upwards of 7000. And there's no way I can keep up a 3000 word-a-day pace, but I had a little extra time today, so I figured I'd add in some padding for the rest of the week.

And truly, it worked out well. It was a very rainy day out, so aside from playing with the kids off and on throughout the day, we ended up watching a fair number of movies on the couch. The netbook is awesome for this, by the way. I could just leave it open and throw in a sentence here and there as I could fit it in.   I don't expect that to work too well during the week, but we'll see how it goes. If I can squeeze in a 500 word challenge or two at work (during lunch, of course), I should be in an excellent position by the time I get around to my usual writing time in the wee hours of 10 PM or later.

I have to say, today was a lot of fun. I cranked through a fair number of pages and there was something so cool about watching all the twitter posts scooting by on TweetDeck in regards to word counts. Someone mentioned that they just couldn't stop writing and they were close to 10,000 words. I have no idea what the quality of said words might be, but I can understand it. I just kept looking at the word count and going "Just 100 more! Or maybe another 100. And another."

We'll see how I'm doing in two weeks, though. I have the feeling it's going to be a slightly different story by then.

Write or Die, Bitches!

W00t!

NaNoWriMo 2009 has begun!

Tricks and Treats

Just a late night update here. I wouldn't call Halloween a bust, per se, but between the rainy damp thing going on (although it was 70 degrees out, go figure), and Connor still being sick enough that I actually had to come back to the house with him once it wasn't overly great either.

We managed to get a pretty good haul, even so. Enough so that the majority of it is going to the office with me so I can give it away, anyway. Damn diet is hard enough to stick to without a mountain of crap in the kitchen.

But I have to say, I did feel a bit melancholy tonight. Maybe it was the rain. Maybe it was the fact that we didn't get too many kids tonight, or that so many houses had their porch lights off. I seem to remember Halloween being a major deal when I was growing up. We would wear our costumes to school, and there would be this huge parade through the neighborhood. We'd go out around 5 and be out until 8 or later, even as kids.

Now though, seems like hardly anything goes on with it. I did read an article the other day that stated that when the economy is bad, Halloween is one of those holidays that tends to take a hit. For example, in 2002, when everyone was riding the dot com wave, people spent like 6.7 million on Halloween crap.

Last year it was like 2.5 or something. I'll have to dig it up, but you could really see it in our neighborhood tonight. Makes me a bit sad, honestly.

I mean, yeah, on the surface it's just another stupid corporate driven holiday. But underneath it all, it's got a deeper meaning, at least for me. A childhood ritual of sorts that's fallen by the wayside for a mishmash of reasons.

(And I had to post another pic of Lucy here in her witch costume. You can't see it here, but in the dark, the whole lower half lit up with tiny little green fiber optic thingys. Was a total hoot.

Randomness & Swine Flu

Not much of a post today, I'm afraid. Connor appears to have Swine Flu, and there's not much to do but ride it out and make sure he doesn't get too dehydrated. I'm actually more concerned about Lucy - she hasn't shown any signs of it yet, but being that she's had so many lung problems in the past and been hospitalized for breathing issues twice, it definitely weighs on my mind.

And of course, Halloween is tomorrow - I'm torn about that too. He's had this Optimus Prime costume sitting in his room for a month now. No parties for him, but I may sneak him out for 15 minutes to do the door to door thing. Otherwise, mr myn will be taking Lucy out to get a couple of pumpkins in a bit and we'll do some carving tonight.

Everything else seems as though it's in a state of waiting. Waiting to hear back from editors/agents/contests. Lots of the waiting.  LOL. And there's not a damn thing I can do about it except write something else. Though I gently nudged Becca the other day to make sure she had gotten my submission, and she had and said she was enjoying it, so here's hoping she asks to see some more. :)

NaNo starts in two days. I might have prepped up enough for it, but I kind of doubt it. Although, with a nice bit of timing Write or Die has just released the desktop version of their software (it's like $10). Pretty much guaranteed to get some results that way, I'm thinking.

Otherwise, it's just a rainy-ass October day.

Suspending Disbelief for Shoujo

You know, it's funny - I love manga and anime. I read a lot of it and before the kids were around I used to watch it all the time. And as anyone who watches anime knows, you tend to have to suspend disbelief quite a bit to get into the enjoyment of the thing.

I tend to put most anime/manga into three categories.

1) Eyecandy. Story doesn't make sense, but it's full of teh pretty so I'm going to watch it anyway.

2) Good story - which is just that. Maybe lower budget in the animation department or art, but I'm more than willing to overlook it if the story is good (or at least decent).

3) Brilliant -  like the newer Hellsing releases, NaNa, Samurai Champloo or Cowboy Bebop.

In either case, you do have make allowances for some cultural differences in both the books and the animation. Both can be very full of violence (including rape), and much of it is graphic. (I'm skipping hentai here, for the moment - that's an entirely different ball of wax). If you can get past that, you can sometimes find excellent and touching stories.

So why do I have this unexplained tender spot for Shoujo? (Which is basically manga for girls). This means it tends to have romance and sorta girly plots. Not that there's not action, because there can be, but it's like comparing Fushigi Yuugi to Death Note. You just can't do it. (And yeah, I like the bishonen too.) *cough*

I wonder at myself, though. I mean, Kaiken Phrase has one of the lamest plots out there, but I couldn't put the damn thing down. Sakuya is the shit, I suppose.  ;-)  And *very* full of teh pretty.

Just like Fushigi Yuugi, Ayashi no Ceres, From Far Away, Immortal Rain, MeruPuri - and a million others I could list here. Although I will say that I try to stick with stories that do have at least *some* sort of grown up plot line - I've never been able to get into Mermaid Melody Pitchi Pitchi Pitch, for example. But even so, a lot of the books are a bit silly. And yet I continue to read them. LOL.

Red River is one of the few solid exceptions - action, romance, and I believe some rather historical accuracy. It's one of those "magic girl" shoujo stories - where the girl is ported away to another time/place/realm - in this case it dumps a 14 year old girl into Anatolia and follows her life over the next several years until she actually manages to become Queen of the Hittites.There's a fairly complicated plot structure in place, and characters get killed off left and right, which is refreshing - and it follows a fair amount of ancient history, touching on Egyptian, Babylonian and several others.

I will say I dislike the romance stories where it's a super young girl and this way dom guy. Kind of gives me a creepy vibe. And I apply that to the yaoi stuff too - which unfortunately has a lot of blushing, apple cheeked boys getting cornholed by these 40 year old fuckbrutes.  Not my thing - I prefer the love to be held on equal terms. Check out Yellow for a manga that explores manlove with a bit more equality.

Alas, I don't have the time or budget to read as many as I used to these days. Plus I'm having trouble finding good meaty ones - Red River is just finishing up at 28 volumes. FY was at least 18 not counting the spin off. AnC was 14. Immortal Rain is still ongoing - there are 8 volumes so far, but it takes almost 2 years now for each new one to be released into the US, which drives me crazy. (And yeah, sometimes I go find the raws, but haven't seen any lately). And then Shojo Beat went belly up earlier this year, so I can't even get my monthly supply of fluff.  *wah*

Anyone have any suggestions?

Morning Music

Last one, I promise. (maybe)  Most of the clips I had were just bits and pieces - the battery started running out on the camera *and* my memory card filled up.  But here's a few that were decent.



And this one is a funky angle 'cause it's mostly just his back, but I got a smile at the end there. ;-)

Minor Epiphany?

And I do mean minor. Took my netbook to the David Garrett concert because 1) I'm a big ass nerd. 2) I was going to be alone there for at least 2 hours before the show started. 3) I'm a big ass nerd. Oh wait.  Right, well, so I skipped the bar scene and found a corner where I could set up and even though I couldn't connect to the wi fi, I was able to get some things done...mainly look over the writing, do some light plotting, work on the pitch, whatever.

Maybe it was the change of venue, or the general atmosphere - excited people, that sort of thing. Kinda swept me up a bit, and I realized that perhaps I've been writing in the wrong direction. I have a tendency to push past the point of sanity and put a lot of undue pressure on myself sometimes. Call it an inner standard of sorts, if you will. I tend to set the bar on the high side - after all, I managed to crank out one novel in less than a year - surely I ought to be able to do it again?And hey, let's try *two* this time.

But then I was thinking that perhaps part of the reason I'm having trouble sorting out some of plotting structure is that I've stopped listening to the inner voices of the characters (and there are bigger things in place here than what I've mentioned, but the concept is the same).In my rush to produce, produce, produce, I've lost something in the translation. Characters are balking, plots are twisting as I try to force them into a box they are struggling to get out of.

Words cannot be forced. At least, mine can't. And the story is letting me know.

Inwardly, I know this, hence my attempt to step back away from things this week and give them a chance to settle out.

And you know what? The characters are starting to whisper things to me again...who they really are. Where they want to go. Who they're gonna fall in love with.

Think I'm going to listen this time.

Pitch Witchery

So I pitched to Becca Stumpf of Prospect Agency today via the chat room over at FF&P. It was less than 10 minutes, but got a nicely enthusiastic response and a request for 30 pages. (Which I'll send either tonight or tomorrow.)

In theory, I suppose that was only my 4th real pitching session (counting the 3 face-to-face ones at RT). In some ways it was easier - I'm here, in front of my computer, so it's not like I have to try to speak clearly or be cheerful or make eye contact. Didn't stop my hands from shaking a little anyway, but lucky for me I was able to cut and paste most of what I had to say.

In other ways, the experience was harder. I mean, sure - they can't see me...but I can't see them either. Sometimes it's hard to judge - are they bored by the concept? Excited? Picking their nose? Writing thank-you notes? Hard to tell what's going beyond that pixel wall. (And I'm the queen of misreading the typed emotions, apparently, so I've been trying to be extra cautious.)

Still, it was a good experience and I'm glad I won the chance to try. So I'll cross my fingers again and see if I hear anything good back.  :)

In the meantime, I've done my good deed and paid it forward by running a mini pitch-practice session last week in the FF&P chat room. (And will probably do it again later this week). No, I'm not a guru, but it's a good place to start and we have a few members who have never pitched anything to anyone. It's nerve wracking, for sure, to throw the concept of your work in front of someone who could, in theory, make or break you. Getting a chance to do it in a safe environment while you work out the bugs is pretty cool, if I do say so myself.

Fiddle Me Timbers...

Oh, like you thought I *wouldn't* post His Royal Hotness tonight?  :P

Long story about today, which I'm not going to get into - though needless to say, mr myn's Jeep is pretty much toast, and I am owed much groveling.

*ahem*

In the meantime, I made it early enough to get a front row seat.  Which would have been awesome, except I apparently chose the wrong side of the stage. David seems to play a lot to his left (go figure and duly noted for next time) and actually quite a bit to his band. So there was a fair amount of time when I basically did nothing but stare at his back.  (And, um.  Backside.)  My camera also didn't do too well in the dim lighting - we weren't allowed to use a flash, for obvious reasons, and most of the pics turned out like crap. (I would have liked to hang around after the show for something a little more close up, but...no. They had a meet and greet, yes, but you had to be a member of WETA, and boo to them, is all I have to say.)

But...the music was so utterly, utterly brilliant. And truthfully, his eyes were shut for most of the thing.  He's deeply in love with his Stradivarius. (And being that it's nearly 300 years old and worth more than $1M, who wouldn't be?) He genuinely appeared to have very little ego - testament to the fact that he's so damn good, he's past the point of needing to prove it.  And I'll stop gushing here, except to say he's got the most gorgeous eyelashes I think I've seen in a very long time.

One other thing I will say is that he had the microphone attached to the violin, and due to the angle it was at, you could hear him breathe during the slower pieces. It's not something I was expecting - it's not something you normally hear on recordings...but it lent a rather strange intimacy to the whole thing. There was nothing hurried about it - but there were times where it almost felt like I'd walked in on something I wasn't supposed to see. And I don't know how to explain that.

Overall, just a lovely show. Dude wasn't afraid to get dirty with the music - definitely an excellent fusion of classical and rock type stuff (including covers of Led Zepplin and Metallica, as well as AC/DC). And he managed to put a great spin on the classical pieces as well - some very unique arrangements.

Bad stuff? The one nutty cougar in the center who apparently thought whenever David took the mic to tell us something that he was talking directly to *her*.  So he'd say something and she'd shout something back at him loud enough that everyone could hear. It was annoying.  I have put her in the box with the nutbag from the Tom Jones concert of two years ago who hung out in front of the stage waving her panties in the air. It's not cute. It's not funny. It's pathetic. Please stop.

I have some video too, of varying quality and length, but I have no energy right now to upload them to youtube, so I'll spare you all until later.  :)